Dream Deferred

For the past 37 years the Black American Studies program has been the cornerstone of SIUC's minority programs, but in recent years it has lost crucial resources and suffered from a lack of direction, making it a ...

Dream Deferred

At the far end of the cramped fourth floor of Faner Hall, in a corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass, seven students pace between two open red doors. At this end of the building, the action doesn't seem to stop. These red doors belong to the Black American Studies program, and these students are here for more than academic help.

This scene - far removed from the regular Faner atmosphere of long hallways void of commotion - is a part of the day-to-day business of this program. The department is the only program in the College of Liberal Arts with no major or graduate studies program. Yet this minor-only program is one of its most active. Students slide in and out of the Rev. Joseph Brown's office. The department director advises, consults, teaches, runs and campaigns on behalf of this office of four professors and one graduate assistant. "We are a referral service, a tutorial service, a human resources department, a financial aid office and an advocate for students," Brown said. "If you don't know how to fight a battle you have to fight, then you need someone to show you how."

Brown and the professors of this small yet busy program are an academic unit, a minority affairs office and a job placement service. Brown leads with a shoestring budget and a small staff, none of whom are tenured. He says he does not understand why his department does not get the resources to help it sustain its multipurpose existence on the SIUC campus. The University formed the department in 1968 in many ways as a quick fix for the social issues on this campus and that the department has never been given the resources it needs to thrive, Brown said.

With the University's administrators requiring professors produce articles and quantitative research work, the often-unnoticed job of mentoring and advocacy work has left the department behind. Yet Brown, who advises four student groups and sits on many University committees including the Faculty Senate, does so of his own free will. "This is not a burden but a responsibility to the social role of the teacher," Brown said. "This isn't just a job. It has a direct impact on social transformation. There is still a need for people who are committed. Difficult as it has been to get an education, you still need to break down doors."

The reality

In his office, Brown sits with two students, working in his latest adviser role. He jokes and trades barbs with them about moving too slowly and craving instant gratification. This is only a portion of the regular flow of students that move through this confined hallway of Faner. This, Brown said, is the reality of what the University does not see as a challenge to the curriculum and the way it is administered. The response to the massive social upheaval of the 1960s was to form black American studies or black studies departments on many campuses - including this one. Yet this response, borne out of protest, led to what several professors and administrators said is a dilemma in higher education.

During the early years of the program's inception at the University, administrators required that it be a social force, influencing and providing the needed support for minority students - particularly black students. Integrating this into the curriculum, however, would mean professors would be advisers, mentors and, most importantly, advocates. When curriculum came into the picture, professors became responsible for producing articles and research to gauge their performance, and mentoring students took a back seat to research.

The screen

Across from Brown is Prentice Norman's office, the smallest of the five. Norman is the department's graduate assistant. When students struggle to pay rent, receive their grant money or need some direction, Norman is the first to counsel them. On average, he counsels 50 students a week. The work is more suited for the University's Financial Aid Office, but Norman said many black students on campus feel more comfortable working with the program.

"This is where they come," Norman said. "A lot of the students don't think the Financial Aid Office has their interests in mind. They come here, and I get on the phone to apply some kind of pressure." Some of the students in his small, bare office do not have the necessary skills to understand how to go about getting more grants and loans or the troubleshooting needed to get by the financial burden of college, Norman said. So Norman has memorized much of the financial aid ins and outs and dials the office frequently to speak on behalf of the students. Norman said this is how the program keeps the black student population on campus from reaching a breaking point.

"Without Father Brown, without Pamela Smoot and the Black American Studies program, the University would have a problem," Norman said. "The department acts as a screen for many of the students' problems. They can just come to us." Senior Rashod Holmes said he is a student who needs the department. The Information System Technology major from Chicago is not a part of the program's academic side, but he talks to its professors on a regular basis. He said black students in particular would be lost without the guidance of black faculty. "Even though we are minorities here in school, it helps just to have a black person at a head of a department," Holmes said. "If they weren't here, the transition from black neighborhoods to a white-dominated campus might be too much for some."

The case for a degree

The Black American Studies program is 37 years old with no degree program in sight. Brown said it was an uphill battle just to get a minor degree. In those three decades, no administrator has recognized the program's role in black issues on campus. Its social role is often downplayed in favor of academics, where status is driven by research. The number of times a professor's name appears in an academic journal, on a list of keynote speakers at a conference or on the title page of a book means prestige for a department and the University, Brown said. Therein lies the problem.

Brown is the department's only tenured faculty, and that means the department cannot build a degree program until its junior faculty rise to tenure status. At SIUC, the only way to get tenured is a show of strong research commitment. So the department's social commitment can only play a small part of its faculty's climb up the University ladder. But the blame does not lie squarely on the administration. More than 30 years have passed without much of a fight for a degree program, Brown said. The department recently began applying pressure on the administration for more resources. "I shouldn't have to petition," Brown said. "If the University was really committed to diversity, I shouldn't have to petition for a degree program - let alone senior faculty."

Chancellor Walter Wendler said the department is at the center of this University's commitment to diversity. Without the department and the professors in it, Wendler said the University loses its prestige for being an inclusive institution geared toward the lower-middle class and minority students. "It has created an intellectual and emotional framework that keeps us nationally ranked for our minority graduation rate," Wendler said. "It needs to be institutionalized because of the value it brings and its professional staff." Wendler said Brown was not the only faculty member petitioning to make the program more competitive in terms of budget and faculty. He said he thought the department deserved the security of being a major, but SIUC, as well as other universities, is slow to change the way departments work. He did not say whether the University was actively pursuing a degree program or when one would be put in place.

Instead, Wendler focused on the University's commitment to diversity as outlined in the "Southern at 150" plan. The plan would align SIUC with the top 75 public research institutions in the United States by 2019, its 150th birthday. The department's other-than-salary budget is exactly $11,000 per year. That includes $11,000 for faculty travel, paper clips, phones in its four offices, pens and all functions related to teaching materials. According to the University's records, 10 professors on this campus individually spend more than $11,000 a year on travel alone. Wendler said despite a small number of faculty and its small budget, the department continues to give the students a level of commitment that is hard to overlook. "Those students in Black American Studies are getting the hearts of Pamela Smoot and Father Brown," he said. "They often sacrifice writing and research at their own peril." The department has had its fair share of comings and goings. Faculty members, considered some of its brightest, jumped at opportunities to work for other universities. This fluid faculty pool has left the department in a perpetual search for new hires.

In the past year, Smoot, an assistant professor in the department, has had multiple surgeries and continued to teach through pain. She has also taken students on her own time to other universities, such as Penn State University, to show them the benefit of continuing education at a graduate level. Leonard Gadzepko, an assistant professor in the department, has battled being stranded in Ghana with some of his students and fought to get U.S. work authorization to step foot on campus just to teach. Shirley Clay Scott, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said the University has already pledged a senior faculty member to the program. This year the department should receive its fifth member. Scott has given Brown the green light for a senior faculty member to take the burden of running the program off his shoulders.

Last year, the department lost a faculty member, Kevin Cokely, to the University of Missouri in Colombia. Wendler said he offered Cokely everything short of the moon to stay, but Cokely decided to leave anyway. Brown said Cokely harbored no animosity toward the University but had decided it was time to move on. Brown said the department has been bogged down with teaching and mentoring in Cokely's absence, and he predicted more faculty could be leaving. Scott said the professors of the department often take on students' problems at the expense of other duties, which should be applauded. But, she said, evaluations that lead to tenure rely on research and teaching, not service. "Everybody is evaluated on teaching, research and service, and generally service is a smaller portion of their responsibility," she said. "If they are heavy on service and light on research, will that count? No, because it wouldn't make up for having no research. "A lot of the things that the faculty in that department get called upon to do are not even formal service responsibilities, and how does that get factored in - I don't know."

Seymour Bryson, associate chancellor for Diversity, has seen the department transform over the years. He said the dilemma with the program's mission stems from a division between administrators and faculty. The administration, he said, sees a department that should be treated as if any other academic program. The faculty, Bryson said, see a reality that stems from the department's history of advocacy. "Black American Studies has an identity crisis," Bryson said. He said administrators tried to recognize the faculty's contribution to its students. But, Bryson said, they did not address the gap in how the University evaluates people professionally and how the faculty in the department spend

their time on non-academic matters. "The problem is in whether Black American Studies should be treated separately with a strictly academic mission or if you believe that there is a multiple purpose," Bryson said. "Unfortunately they have been placed in a role where they are advocates." Bryson said he has told Brown and some of his staff that they do not have to play parts as social workers. Brown, however, scoffed at the idea and said he could not give up the role. Brandon Moore, the head of Underground Arts, one of the student organizations Brown advises, said regardless of how the University views the department, the students see its role as a social force on campus. "Where would we go if they weren't here?" Moore said. "This department is more than just school."